Abortion and Reproductive Rights - Gradually Regressive:
The Bush administration's "global gag rule" prohibited overseas organizations receiving federal funds from advocating for abortion rights, performing abortions, or providing abortion referral services. Under Bush, the FDA artificially delayed approval of Plan B (misoprostol) for over-the-counter use by more than two years. The Bush administration consistently promoted abstinence-only education rather than comprehensive sex education.
Death Penalty - Retentionist:
Bush presided over 155 executions during his term as Texas governor, the most of any governor since the death penalty's reinstatement in 1976. As president, however, he did not stand out on this issue. His administration (unlike Clinton's) did not expanded the conditions under which the death penalty may be sought, nor did it pursue a conspicuously high number of federal capital cases.
The First Amendment - Extremely Problematic:
Bush signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill in 2002, and supported a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration (though it never passed). He established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which awarded billions in federal funds to religious charities. All post-9/11 federal law enforcement civil liberties abuses prior to January 2009 technically occurred under the auspices of the Bush administration.
Immigrants' Rights - Moderately Generous:
Unlike most Republicans, President Bush supported a citizenship path for undocumented immigrants as well as guest worker programs. He stated on more than one occasion that mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is not a viable option, and backed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in early 2007. While he increased enforcement of existing anti-immigrant ordinances, his opposition to punitive federal anti-immigrant proposals in 2005 and 2006 may have blocked their passage.
Lesbian and Gay Rights - Status Quo:
Although President Bush strongly advocated a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage at the federal level, it never passed. Bush made no attempt to rescind President Clinton's Executive Order 13087, banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in federal employment. Bush opposed a 2007 bill that would have federalized hate crime investigations while adding sexual orientation to the list of hate crime categories, but his stated rationale had to do with the federalization of hate crimes, not the addition of sexual orientation as a protected category.
Race and Equal Opportunity - Mixed Record:
President Bush appointed the first non-white attorney general and both the first and second non-white secretaries of state, but these visible achievements do not negate other problems with his administration's civil rights policies. Bush was elected to his first term in November 2000 under the shadow of minority voter disenfranchisement in Florida. His social policy reforms also tended to financially benefit white Americans, and post-9/11 law enforcement policies sometimes involved ethnic profiling (though on paper, he was technically the first president to ban the practice).
The Second Amendment - Weak Platform, Strong Congress:
President Bush actually had a relatively weak platform on gun rights for a Republican, but this was well disguised by the vigilance of the Republican Congress. Bush supported the Clinton assault weapons ban while campaigning in 2000, for example--but because the Republican Congress never passed a bill to renew it, it expired anyway. To his credit, Bush did sign a 2006 bill banning unconstitutional confiscation of legally owned firearms, as had occurred in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The Supreme Court - Record Not Yet Clear:
President Bush appointed Chief Justice John Roberts to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito to replace Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Whether Roberts and Alito are ultraconservatives in the tradition of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, or moderate conservatives in the tradition of Anthony Kennedy, is not yet clear.
War on Terror - The Post-9/11 President:
The Bush administration more or less invented the term "War on Terror," and the civil liberties abuses that have come along with it. These policies have permanently scarred the legacy of what might otherwise have been a relatively centrist and non-threatening presidency. Read more...
Tom's Take:
"In 30 years," Garrison Keillor wrote in a 2007 op-ed, "a few historians will come along to say that {President Bush} was better than a lot of people thought. For our sake, I sure hope they're right."
President Bush was not the first president, or even the first recent president, to sign off on torture, warrantless surveillance, illegal monitoring of opposition groups, ethnic and religious profiling, mass arrest and detention of perceived "foreign radicals," and so on and so forth. This is not to say that President Bush was good; this is to say that presidents, in general, tend to be very bad, and do not receive the scrutiny that they deserve. The post-9/11 abuses were just far enough beyond our threshold to attract the attention of the press, but every president would have benefited from that sort of attention.
Never trust the president, no matter who the president is. This cardinal rule of government was central to the Founding Fathers' thinking when they drafted the Constitution, but even they lived to see George Washington transformed into demigod status by biographers. Never trust the president. This is what Americans learned after Watergate, and it is the lesson we as Americans should be learning now. Never trust the president. It is a lesson that the Obama administration will teach us, just as the Bush administration has.
